August 13, 2009

Creditors Go After Heller Pension Fund

Heller’s creditors want $13.8 million of Heller’s pension plan assets “set aside” for them, and Heller’s dissolution committee has agree to do so.

Creditors think about $24 million in pension contributions for 2007 fall under a fraudulent transfer claim they say they’ll assert against former shareholders. About $10.2 million was in other pension plans that have been liquidated and closed, leaving about $13.8 million for creditors to haggle over.

The creditors committee is hoping to show the firm was insolvent as early as 2007, and that money that flowed out of it throughout 2008 is theirs. Retirement benefits that accrued in 2007 were deposited into the plan in early 2008.

Heller’s Dissolution Committee is currently administering the retirement plan, but has proposed to transfer authority to Keith Betzina, counsel at Davis Wright Tremaine. They hope to distribute all $49 million in assets out of the plan as soon as Friday or Monday and close it.

But wait, there’s more: Those pesky accounts receivable, and more bank flogging.

Speaking of money, Heller has collected $23 million in accounts receivable since it filed for bankruptcy in December. It had collected $70 million in the three months between its dissolution and the bankruptcy, according to an interim status report filed in bankruptcy court.

About $54 million in AR is left. Paragraph 22 of the report says a lot about the creditors’ resignation on collecting the rest:

“The Committee is not satisfied with a 63 percent collection rate, but unfortunately the most important three months of collections — the three months immediately after dissolution — occurred while Bank of America and/or Citibank was essentially managing the Debtor through its absolute control over each check released and paid by Bank of America and/or Citibank. By the time of the Debtor’s bankruptcy filing, most accounts were more than ninety days old. Thus, a 30% collection rate post-petition is essentially in the range of what the Committee anticipated very early in this case — in other words, the low hanging fruit had already been picked by the time of the bankruptcy filing.”